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Foreign Office talk for aspiring politicians

Career advice from industry experts is part of life at Alton College. Tamsin Heath, a senior official with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office was on campus this month discussing her role in government and inspiring our A level Government and Politics students.

Tamsin’s career has already provided her with experiences in Iraq, China, Yemen and Saudia Arabia and she has worked on all sorts of foreign policy issues and the reform of international financial policy. She explained to the students that the Foreign Office provides a lot of flexibility for its employees, but it was usual for them to have a couple of career anchors, and hers were economics and China and the Middle East.

First year Politics student Kathy Rieden, previously at Weydon School, said that ‘before the talk, I hadn’t realised how interesting the Foreign Office was’ and that Tamsin was ‘so enthusiastic about her job which was really inspiring to see’.Guerson Neto, previously at Bohunt School, found Tamsin’s talk very informative and said that he was ‘possibly now considering a different career path.’ He also mentioned that he thought ‘talks from industry professionals like this are really beneficial to students.’

Alton College Students’ Union President Tom Chapman, formerly at Eggars School, definitely wants to go into politics in the future and is keen to be a prospective parliamentary candidate in 2020. He said that this talk had given him ‘more insight into a route through the civil service and the process of how to go about this, all very useful for the future.’

Tamsin said that she was ‘very impressed with the maturity of the students and the level of their questions and how engaged they were with the talk’. Whilst Julian Cawkell, teacher of Government and Politics said that the talk was ‘extremely useful for his students and gave insight into a life working for the Foreign Office and will have helped several students in making career decisions.’

More information about studying Government and Politics at Alton College can be found here